by Hill, Teresa
“You kept my phone number?”
“Yes.”
“Anything at all. I mean it.”
“Fine. Go.”
So, he did.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Dani
She dreaded going into work that afternoon. She couldn’t afford to lose the job, but she couldn’t say Nico would be wrong to fire her after last night.
Her roommate dropped her off fifteen minutes early, and she was lucky enough to find Nico alone in the place.
She took a breath to calm the nervous energy buzzing through her body, then walked up to him and said, “Hi.”
“Dani.”
No inflection at all. And his expression was blank.
“I’m sorry about last night. It won’t happen again. I’ll never have another drink in this bar.”
“I won’t ever sell you another drink in this bar.”
“Okay.”
Did that mean she still worked here? She didn’t like to explain herself and her troubles. It felt like making excuses to her. But Nico had always seemed like a nice guy, an understanding one. He’d treated her fairly, dealt with a lot of crap from people at the bar — customers and people who worked there — without losing his cool. She felt like she owed him an explanation.
“It was the widows’ group last night. That’s what upset me so much that I threw back those shots and did … what I did.” She never wanted to talk about this, but she had to. “My fiancée was in the Navy. He died last summer. I see the widows group, and … It’s really hard.”
She could call him her fiancé, couldn’t she? He did ask her to marry him. Beg her, even. That much was true, whether Aaron meant it or not.
She felt Nico’s hand close over hers. “I’m sorry, Dani. I didn’t know.”
She nodded. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Don’t tell anybody else, okay?”
“If that’s what you want.”
She waited, and when he didn’t say anymore, she blurted out, “So, do I still have a job?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, Nico.”
“Hey, you got home all right? That guy who came here looking for you, he didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”
“No. He was fine. I didn’t know who he was at first in the parking lot. Turns out he knew my fiancé.”
And got to see me stinking drunk and trying to pick up two men.
She thanked Nico again for giving her another chance and started on the repetitive prep work she could do half-asleep – wiping down the tables and chairs, sweeping, making sure each table had salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard and real and fake sugar of all kinds.
One of the other waitresses joined Dani when she was rolling silverware in napkins, and couldn’t wait to talk about the previous night.
“So, you had three guys fighting over you in the parking lot?” Jill asked.
“No. I got stupid drunk and flirted with two guys. The third one tried to keep me from doing something even stupider.”
Jill looked disappointed. “I was excited for you, thinking you had three guys after you.”
“Believe me, I don’t want one guy, much less three.”
“Come on. You don’t want to be single forever, and I heard that one of the guys was really hot! Is he really a SEAL?”
“Yes.”
Jill groaned. “No guys have bodies as good as the SEALS. Talk about drool-worthy.”
In Dani’s mind, she saw again his sleek, well-defined muscles. A woman would have to be dead not to notice, and she wasn’t dead.
“Ohh. You don’t have to say anything. I can see it in your face,” Jill said.
“Nothing happened. He made sure I got home okay, and I helped clean him up after the mix-up in the parking lot.”
“Did you give him your number? Are you gonna see him again?”
“No, I didn’t give him my number.”
But he gave her his. “I want you to know you can call me, for any reason, for anything you need.”
Like … if she was brave enough to ask him what it was like when Aaron died?
It felt like someone was squeezing her lungs shut when she thought about that. She’d had nightmares for so long, invented so many different scenarios about what Aaron went through that awful day. Sometimes she’d wake up sobbing, sometimes screaming.
The nightmares had been coming less frequently, at least, but now Mace was here, wanting to stir it all up again. Was it really that hard for him to understand she wanted to leave it all alone?
“Dani?”
Jill was trying to talk to her.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“I said if you’re not interested in him, maybe you could introduce me? I finally dumped my boyfriend, so I’m free.”
“Uhh. If he comes in again … Sure.”
“Thank you.” Jill hugged her, practically bouncing with excitement. “I’ve always wanted to go out with one of them. I know women chase them like crazy, and they probably get to take their pick of any woman they want, but … you know … Why not me?”
“Of course,” Dani said. “Why not? You’re gorgeous.”
Jill had always seemed nice. She wasn’t a drama queen, wasn’t in love with herself and her looks, didn’t seem to try to manipulate everyone around her, didn’t put other people down. Mace seemed nice. He deserved a nice girl like Jill in his life, if he didn’t already have one.
Dani didn’t like the idea of Jill wanting Mace because of what he did, rather than who he was as a person, but what did she really know about the man? Except that he’d gone out of his way to try to help her last night and offered to do the same again, whenever she needed it.
He couldn’t really be that nice, could he?
Maybe he just felt sorry for Dani. She’d been a mess last night.
And now Mace wanted to talk about Aaron, to drag her back to that time when the loss, the sense of betrayal, was so raw. But she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t let herself.
It was time to move on, put her life back together and maybe be happy again.
* * *
Dani
“Hey, your friend is back,” Joey the bartender said, nodding to his left.
She stood, baffled, at the spot at the bar reserved for the servers, waiting on Joey to fill an order for one of her tables. She didn’t have any friends in this town except the people here at the bar and her roommate, Leah.
Turning her head, she wasn’t prepared to see Mace.
He’d left her alone for a whole forty-eight hours, in which she had made so many mistakes with drinks and food orders she thought she’d come close to being fired again. She’d woken up crying from nightmares, and Aaron had been constantly on her mind.
When she wasn’t thinking of Mace and how mad she was that he’d ever walked into her life.
She didn’t want to ask any questions about Aaron dying, but there all answers were, inside the man standing at the bar.
Jill rushed over to Dani and stared at Mace. “Oh, my God. Is that him?”
“Yes,” Dani said.
“What’s wrong? He’s gorgeous!”
“He’s trouble. That’s what he is.”
“Want me to go talk to him for you?” Jill offered.
“Sure. Tell him to go away.”
“Are you kidding? You want that man to go away?”
“That’s exactly what I want,” she said.
Joey sat her three beers and a shot of whiskey on the bar, and Dani loaded them onto her tray. Without another glance in Mace’s direction, she delivered the drinks to three guys in their twenties.
She was slowly checking on every other table she had when Jill came back and said, “Uhh, he didn’t leave.”
“What a surprise.”
“Dani, he has the most gorgeous brown eyes, and he smells great. I could have just stood there and sniffed him and been happy.”
He did smell good. She still remembered that, dammit.
“He asked f
or a table in your section, and I gave him one.”
Dani practically growled at Jill.
“He’s a customer. What am I supposed to do? Flash him my boobs and ask him nicely to sit at one of my tables instead?”
“Would you?”
“For him?” Jill turned around for another look and giggled. “I haven’t flashed the girls at anybody since that one semester I spent in college. It worked pretty well back then.”
“You have killer boobs. I bet it would still work.”
“Yeah, maybe, but my luck, I’d get caught and Nico would fire me. Sorry. Can’t take that chance. Not even for a guy as yummy as him.”
“It’s okay. I’ll wait him out. I’m more stubborn than he is.”
So Dani thought.
But the damned man wouldn’t leave. She ignored him and ignored him and ignored him. Jill finally brought him a beer, which he sipped much too slowly, and once it was empty, he still didn’t leave.
Would he go if she spilled a drink on him? She was mad enough to do it.
Cussing under her breath after an hour and fifteen uncomfortable minutes, she stomped over. “What are you doing here?”
“Would you believe I wanted a drink?”
“No.”
“A burger?”
“This town has much better burgers than we serve here.”
“Okay. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Yeah. If I wanted to talk to you, I’d have called you. But I don’t, so I didn’t. Which means you should not be here.”
She’d pepper-sprayed him, but if they were measuring pain, she’d bet he’d caused her more than she’d caused him. Since talking to Mace, she couldn’t stop thinking about what it had been like when Aaron died, and those were thoughts and images she did not need.
It was like there were two Aarons, the rat-bastard who’d lied to her and the fake version she’d loved and lost. She couldn’t reconcile the two. She’d done better at not thinking about fake-Aaron, although she’d never managed that about good-guy-Aaron, charming-Aaron. Her little talk with Mace had made it harder than ever.
Dani felt like she was two people now, too. Stupid Dani had fallen for Aaron and believed everything he said. Hard-Ass Dani came afterward and was her only hope to survive.
Now she was having trouble summoning Hard-Ass-Dani at all.
“Look,” Mace said softly, “I can’t make sense of the guy I met treating you the way you say he did.”
“Yeah? Well, neither can I, but he did. The facts don’t lie. We’re not married. We never were. And he’s dead, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I think it does. It matters to you.”
“Well, it shouldn’t. You are not helping by making me talk about it.”
“I’m sorry. All I want to do is help. Really, I do.”
“Fine. Go away. Leave me alone. Drink somewhere else.”
He still wasn’t going anywhere. He looked at her with kindness, or pity, and maybe both, neither of which she wanted.
From behind her, someone called out for another drink. She left Mace at his table. She served her customers, collected on someone’s tab, cleared that table and wiped it down for the next customers, and delivered another round of drinks.
Mace was still there.
It might be time to drop a drink in his lap. A tall, icy one. She hoped his balls shriveled up and got frostbite. Nothing made a man run like hurting his balls.
“He bothering you? Want me to get rid of him?” Joey asked.
“No. I need a ginger ale with lots of ice.”
He shot her a funny look — nobody drank ginger ale here, unless it was mixed with something — but poured her the drink. Mace watched her walk toward him. She debated whether to give him one more chance to leave.
“Look, I’m sorry. I really don’t want to upset you. I just have this feeling that something about this is off. Give me a chance to figure it out.”
Okay, that was it. She picked up the drink and stretched out her hand. She had barely tilted it enough to spill a drop when his hand shot out to grab the glass. He jumped to his feet and back out of the way.
The glass wobbled as they fought over it. She kept trying to dump it on him, even though he had moved, but he was so strong, she couldn’t do it. The glass shook a little with both their hands trying to turn it different ways. Ginger ale and few ice cubes splashed over their hands and onto the floor, but that was it. He wouldn’t let her douse him.
“That was mean,” he said.
She still held her tray in her other hand. She brought it around, planning to swing it like a bat to send the drink in a line-drive toward him, but he picked up on that, too, and grabbed her other hand before she could make her move.
The man had reflexes like a ninja.
She growled at him, so mad and frustrated she thought about trying to knee him in the balls. If she couldn’t ice them, she could at least bruise them.
“Don’t you dare.” He laughed, and that made her madder still. “You won’t catch me off guard again like you did the other night.”
Joey rushed over. “Hey, is there a problem here?”
“No problem,” Mace said. “Just a little spill.”
Joey leaned over to her and whispered, “Nico could walk back in here from the office at any second, Dani. You don’t really want to make a scene, right?”
Yes, she did. She wanted to pitch a fit against pushy men, men who made her fall in love with them and then lied, against all of mankind, but she needed this job.
“Okay. I’ll behave,” she told Joey.
He rolled his eyes at her — clearly not believing her — but walked back to the bar anyway. Mace was still smiling.
“What is it with you? I pepper-sprayed you the other night, and tonight, I tried to dump a drink in your lap.”
“You did,” he agreed cheerfully.
“Most men would not be happy about that.”
“You’ve still got some fight in you, Dani. I’ll take anger over sadness from a woman any day.”
“I’m nothing to you. Whether I’m mad or sad or picking up strange men in bars shouldn’t matter to you.”
“I feel terrible about not being able to do more to save Aaron. I can’t do anything more for him, but I believe he loved you. I figure doing something to help you is what he’d want from me more than anything.”
“Whether or not I want it? Do you know how arrogant and controlling that is?”
“I made a promise after he died right in front of me — ”
“See, that? I didn’t want to know that. I have nightmares about it. More often than I used to since you walked into my life. You’re not helping!”
“One chance. That’s all I want.”
“To do what?”
“Prove that he’s not the lying bastard you think he was. That he wasn’t scamming you. That it wasn’t a joke to him to pretend to love you and marry you.”
“You can’t do that. He’s gone.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Don’t say that to a man like me.”
“A man like what? A stubborn idiot?”
“A Navy SEAL. We don’t quit, and we don’t know the meaning of the word impossible.”
She gaped at him. “You think stealth, speed, an automatic weapon, maybe some explosives, are going to fix what Aaron did to me?”
“We’re not just stealthy and speedy and good at blowing things up. We’re smart and more determined than anybody else you’ll ever meet.”
“You can’t disprove a fact. We’re not married. We never were.”
“Then it shouldn’t be hard or take long for me to figure that out.”
Dani wanted another drink. This one, she’d hurl straight at his head.
Jill caught Dani’s eye and made a motion with her hand that Dani wasn’t quite sure about, but might have had something to do with hot Mace was.
She’d forgotten about Jill.
“Why don’t you forget about me and all my problems and go sit in my frien
d Jill’s section. She’ll flash you her boobs, and I happen to know she thinks you’re hot. She’s basically a sure thing for you.”
He cocked his head to the left. “You think I need help picking up women?”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“Give me ten minutes tonight. Let me ask you some questions, and I’ll take it from there. Good news for you is I won’t be here bothering you. I’ll be somewhere else, trying to figure out what happened with you and Aaron and this whole marriage thing. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If I left?”
“Yes. And you’ll stay away?”
“Until I have some answers.”
“I don’t want answers — ”
“Sweetheart, you want them so bad you can hardly stand it. Every woman who’s ever been lied to or dumped or abandoned by a man wants answers. It’s in your DNA.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to do this. He’s gone. He can’t tell you anything now.”
“Let me worry about that. If I’m wrong about Aaron, think about the satisfaction you’ll get out of me coming back and being forced to admit that you were right.”
She was still mad, but she did want him to go away. “Most men can never admit it when they’re wrong.”
“I’ll wear a shirt that says I was wrong. Dani was right. I’ll put it on a billboard, hire a skywriter to drag it in an airplane over the bar. Whatever you want.”
Her mouth twitched. “I guess I might enjoy that.”
He grinned. “Which one?”
“All three.”
“Done. What time do you get off tonight?”
“When it slows down enough that Nico sends me home.”
“Fine. I’ll wait.”
* * *
Chapter Eight
Mace
He liked her feisty and mad. It meant Aaron hadn’t destroyed her, that one day, she’d be fine. Mace had a habit of wanting to fix things for women in trouble, for the broken ones. He didn’t think it was such a bad habit, but his friends did. And more than once, trying to help a woman had gotten him into trouble. Fist fights, an angry boyfriend who’d seriously messed up one of the best cars he’d ever had, a few near-arrests, getting pepper-sprayed three times now.
